


Critical Condition

by tvfordessert



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: F/F, Love Epiphany, Season 4 Hiatus, post 4x12, third party love confession
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-21
Updated: 2017-03-21
Packaged: 2018-10-08 17:16:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10391886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tvfordessert/pseuds/tvfordessert
Summary: Ray Holt decides it's time to send Rosa Diaz home. Ever since Gina's accident the detective has thrown herself head-first into her work - and everyone's starting to get concerned.





	

Raymond Holt paced his office glancing out towards the bullpen. His eyes were fixated on the source of his particular concerns and anxieties - Detective Rosa Diaz. 

He wished Gina were just a shout away as he'd grown accustomed. Not that Captain Holt needed any assistance when it came to managing his team, only that in the realm of matters more personal than professional Gina Linetti had a leg up - particularly when it came to Rosa. Holt found the two to be oddly in sync, he even recalls Gina once referring to the detective as her "soul twin" or was it "spirit kin"? He couldn't recall what she'd said exactly, it was one of those Gina-isms he often failed to understand.

However, the absence of Gina was what had caused the emotional disturbance in the precinct. It had been nearly forty-eight hours since his assistant had been pummeled by a metro-bus leaving her in critical condition and the nine-nine in disarray. Gina had yet to wake from her coma, making this the longest anyone on his team had gone without her two cents in a long time.

Kevin had thought it best for Ray to take an emotional respite after Gina's accident, but he was feeling a heightened sense of duty and he wasn't alone in that. After all, what was their job if not to protect civilians? Civilians like Gina. Now Kevin's request haunted him as he paced his office. How could he neglect Kevin's advise and then turn around and ask one of his detectives to acquiesce to a similar demand?

Rosa Diaz left him no choice in the matter. Everyone was taking the shock of Gina's accident in their own way, but Rosa's method was beginning to raise red flags with everyone in the precinct. The main problem being that she hadn't left the nine-nine since the incident. Despite running on no sleep, Rosa seemed to be wired; for a period overnight she had reportedly apprehended nearly one perp per hour. Finally, Terry had to ask Rosa to stop since their holding cell was approaching maximum capacity. She seemed agitated to be taken off the street, however quickly began to throw herself at the case reports for her arrests with an Amy-like drive and precision.

In fact, Rosa was so engrossed in paperwork that she hadn't noticed Captain Holt casting incredulous glances of father-like concern. Holt surmised that she probably hadn't lifted her head in an hour, or whenever her last fuel break was - she'd been living off of terrible instant coffee and energy bars for the past two days.

After a period of contemplation, Raymond Holt let out a deep sigh and opened the door to his office.

"Detective Diaz, I'd like to see you in my office." He stood in his doorway.

This elicited no response from the detective.

"Detective Diaz." Holt raised his voice, this time causing everyone but Rosa to glance up at him.

"Rosa!" He finally barked, slightly irritated.

He felt immediate remorse for this irritation the instant the detective's head shot up. She had evidently been in a genuine fugue state in which she must have truly not heard his first two summons. The usually unnervingly composed detective looked like hell. Her eyes were crazed and slightly twitchy from a lack of sleep and her hair was pulled back sloppily by means of a clip behind her head. Her authentic dishevelment concerned the captain further.

Upon processing his request, Diaz shuffled from her desk to his office and Holt closed the door behind her.

"What's going on, Captain?" She asked, acting as though everything were entirely normal and she were about to receive a new case from him. Holt knew Diaz was too perceptive to actually believe that was why he had called her in, so he wondered what caused her to put on such a façade. 

"Diaz, sit down." He guided her toward the couch, then continued. "Detective, I'm going to have to send you home. Understand that I have no other choice, and this is for your own benefit."

"Captain, I can't just go home. I'm in the middle of filing a case." She stood up, coming more alive than he had seen her in the past couple of hours. 

"I can easily pass those cases on to Santiago or Boyle."

"But they're my cases Captain, it'd just be smoother if I finished them up."

"Diaz, you didn't go home last night." Holt said, cutting to the core of the matter and causing her to become more tense.

"No sir, I was a little busy doing my job." She bitterly retorted.

Under normal circumstances Raymond Holt would not tolerate that level of insubordination but, considering the emotionally raw state the precinct was steeped in, he let it slide.

"Detective Diaz, I don't think I need to tell you that "doing your job" for nearly forty hours puts you far beyond overtime. I cannot afford to keep you on any longer." He replied firmly, but not harshly.

"Furthermore, it is unsafe to keep a detective on duty this long without rest. And I think you know that." He went on when he saw the look of resistance had yet to fully subside.

"With all due respect Captain, I have to get back to this case. Just because Amy and Charles are nerds who get off on paperwork, doesn't mean I can't do my job."

Holt was about to point out that it seemed Detective Diaz had completely missed the point of his previous statement, when she attempted to nonchalantly stroll out of his office as if her commentary had somehow put the issue to rest. This escape was easily thwarted with Holt's arm. 

"Rosa, this is not a request." He stated. "You're going home."

Holt braced himself for another wave of confrontation but, keeping with the theme of unpredictability, Rosa remained unmoving in front of him. It was then he noticed that her eyes had began to water slightly around the edges. She plopped back onto the couch defeated and exhausted. 

"This is exactly why I can't stop working." She looked up, blaming him for her gentle stream of tears even though she knew he wasn't really at fault.

Ray Holt now sat beside her as a friend, and not a boss; he placed a comforting hand between her lightly trembling shoulder blades. This was the first emotional response he'd seen from Rosa since the accident, much like himself, she was not always well-trained in handling personal emotions. The few instances in which Diaz's hard exterior softened around him left him utterly tongue-tied. 

"I-" she finally broke. "I'm scared, okay."

"We all are, Rosa." His own concern for Gina bubbling to the surface.

"I'm not used to being scared. It sucks." Her normally stoic face was betrayed with inlayed paths mapping where the tears had just struck her a moment ago.

"Gina's in the most capable hands at the hospital, and -"

"I do." She interrupted. "It's just- it's more that...I love her."

"I know, Detective Diaz." She sniffled and looked at him hopefully, maybe she wouldn't have to say the rest. "Despite her dramatic nature and indecipherable social codes, we all love Gina."

"No." The hope left her eyes.

"We don't all love Gina?" Holt asked, now confused. 

"No, we do, but..." She took a deep breath. "When Amy called me and told me what happened I- I felt like I had been shot. I know it's lame, but there was a ringing in my ears and the room blurred and- and I just wanted to puke and cry. It felt like one of those bad Nicholas Sparks' movies Boyle loves, but it made me realize something."

"Realized what, Diaz?" Holt said after giving her a moment as she was once again succumbing to more waves of emotion and he wanted to allow her time to find her footing. 

"That I love her." She read on his face that he did not quite get it yet, so she pushed forward to spell it out more clearly. "Captain Holt, I am in love with Gina."

Rose Diaz's condition over the past forty-eight hours was starting to take on much more clarity to the captain. He felt even worse for scrutinizing her behavior.

Images of Rosa and Gina side-by-side started to fill Holt's head. Raymond Holt was dismissive towards whimsical notions of romance, to him relationships needed to pass the same tests of logic that all other decisions in life do. Looking back, he saw tremendous logic in Rosa and Gina as a pair. As much as he took pride in himself and his team, he suddenly wondered how this was the first moment any among them had affixed the word '"love" to the duo. 

"How long?" He broke the brief silence.

"Long. I'm an idiot, I didn't see it before-"

"You only just-"

"When Amy called me, yes." Rosa felt as if she could literally see the tension in her muscles evaporating into the air.

In a truly unprecedented act of understanding and empathy, Raymond Holt embraced the detective in his arms.

"What if she dies." In her bosses arms, Rosa felt safe to release the ultimate fear she'd harbored since Gina's accident. Just putting her dread into words caused her to break into an uncontrollable sob.

"No, no, no." Holt said in conjecture with her tears, pulling the detective out from their hug and looking her in the eyes. "Gina has told me herself, on multiple occasions, that she intends to outlive all of us."

This produced a small smile through Rosa's tears, the kind of smile she'd been craving, the kind only Gina could conjure.

"Have you been to see her?" He asked as Rosa collected herself after her fit of tears.

"Not yet." She admitted. "I'm scared I won't be ready after-"

"Go see her on your way home." He instructed, knowing she would need that sense of closure before she could truly rest. "Kevin's there with her today, and I've found there's no one better to have in a time like this."

Rosa nodded in agreement. Kevin was an undeniably comforting presence and knowing he would be there did put her at ease for a visit she knew she'd have to make eventually.

With that, Rosa Diaz proceeded to walk out of his office, finally heading home. Holt watched from his door as she walked past Peralta's desk. Jake had expressed concerns to Holt about Rosa on multiple occasions since Gina's accident despite his own distress over his childhood friend. 

"Everything alright?" Jake directed towards Rosa on her way out.

"Yeah, just heading home." Jake looked so relieved to hear her say that.

"Wait, Jake?" Diaz back-pedaled just when he thought she had left. "When was the last time you screwed up with Amy?"

"Last week." He sighed. "I didn't remember who Janet Reno was."

Rosa made a mental note to tease Amy for that later, but now she had other things on her mind. 

"Where did you get the flowers?"


End file.
